For this assignment, I chose to produce a twitter essay based off of Ashley Hinck’s article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom.”
Hinck’s refers to the overused digital tools that, like class worksheets, limit the abilities of student learning… and essentially follow students around their educational careers. To some it may not seem like the biggest deal, but what Hinck suggests is that limiting student learning tools further limits student’s creativity. Because common tools are so easy to navigate, the task at hand is simple for students to simply drag and drop.
Hinck promotes digital tools like CSS, HTML, and Scratch, that allow for multiple right answers rather than regurgitated curriculum. With tools that allow for diverse thinking and creativity, students will shy away from the fear of being wrong. Teachers should promote the joy of discovery, and figuring out learning through trial and error processes.
Personally, doing this activity as a twitter essay was very much like using the suggested tools in Hinck’s article. I admired the idea of commenting on my own posts material that was short and to the point, or at least I thought so at first. As interesting as it was to include GIFS and images in my responses, the responses themselves were limited to a low about of characters, just like any other tweet.
My mistake was posting each tweet after finalizing it, rather than writing out each tweet individually on a document and moving them on to the twitter platform. Four or five tweets in I realized I could have added another tweet or two in-between tweets I had already posted.
This was frustrating and cumbersome to fix, but it at least allowed me to learn from my mistake and approach the platform a little differently.
You can view my twitter essay in its entirety by clicking here!